Real Missionaries!

The next day we were fed yet another amazing breakfast – savoury oatmeal!  It was actually just like eating stuffing for breakfast!  So tasty, and somehow so appropriate for the Christmas season, ‘cause it was like eating leftovers from the turkey dinner for breakfast (even though, of course, we didn’t have anything even close to a turkey dinner this Christmas!).

After breakfast, we loaded up the Patrol and went for a ride to a real village.  As I mentioned before, the folks we were visiting up there are “real missionaries”.  A is a nurse and T is a linguist for one particular language community who live up in the mountains there.  So they spend some of their time in their little town house in Kbng, and some of their time in their village house in the mountains with the community that they’re working with.

So this day trip to the village was a chance for us to go and meet and greet their village neighbors and bring them a little Christmas cheer!  It was really great to see the village and hang out with the folks there.  Even though I’ve lived in Africa for several years now, I rarely get the chance to go to live with village people!  Most of my time is spent in cities and towns - which is just fine with me, actually, but it’s good to go and get a different perspective on life sometimes, you know?

And A & T obviously know the folks in this village well and already speak the language and have some very good relationships with the folks there.  So we went to see their house and compound, which is again set amongst some amazing scenery!   

There ain't nothing like a poisonous snake to welcome you home!

Their little tukel is beautiful, too!

An African tukel wouldn't be complete with the USAID touch on top, though:

A has a nice little garden in the compound, so the little town kids amongst us (that is, Frankie and Ella) got a little lesson in how to dig onions from the garden!

After the gardening and a little lunch, we went visiting to the neighbours.  The local folks live in clusters of tukels, surrounded by fences made from branches and sticks.  They have tiny little holes in the fence which you have to crawl through to get into the little compounds.  It was, well, a bit difficult to gracefully squeeze through those little holes, especially when one was wearing a long skirt!  A had warned us that the village folk weren’t used to seeing women in pants/trousers, so unless we wanted them to all be staring at our bums, we should wear skirts (just like real missionaries :) ). Sure did make it difficult to crawl through the openings in the fences into their compounds, though!  Plus, I was a bit of a giant compared to the local folks!

 The folks were very friendly, though, and didn’t mind us taking a few photos of their homes.   

Frankie and Ella were “loving on” the local children by accelerating their tooth decay (that is, they gave out sweets to each and every child in the village!).  Ella is such a “people person” and quickly made friends with the little kids in the village – of which there were many. 

As we walked from compound to compound, we seemed to collect children.  I kind of felt like the Pied Piper.  They were all friendly, even though I only learned one word in their language! 

We weren’t intending on spending the night in the village, though, so we had to say farewell to our new village friends and pile back in the SUV to get back home before it got too dark.

I liked being in that little village for a day.  You could certainly tell the difference between the “city” Ugandans and the “village” Ugandans!   

But Frankie and Ella did really well with the kids in the village.  Kids are kids no matter where they grow up!

And I very much enjoyed getting the tiniest little glimpse of how the folks live up there in the mountains.  But admittedly, I don’t know how long I would last living in a tiny little remote village like that.  I’m very, very glad I get to live in cities and towns and still get to do the work that I love to do!  And I’m very, very glad there are people like A & T who seem to love living in a remote area like that.  And man, is it ever remote.  I’ve been to some remote-ish places in the country where I live, but this village just seemed to truly be at the end of the road.  And frankly, I didn’t know such remoteness even existed in Uganda! 

 But what a great opportunity to go and see it first hand like this.  I mean, really, how many people have a chance to go visiting places like this?  But as much fun as it was to just go and visit, I do hope that somehow our visit actually DID encourage the folks who live and work there long term and that it did somehow encourage the village folks.  I don’t want it to just be a little trip where we went and saw and took pictures and left again.  But I’m not sure how to make it something else, you know?  Anyway, if you’re the praying sort, perhaps you can pray for those folks up in the mountains.  Pray that the work this nurse and linguist are doing with them can really benefit them and that they will be able to use their language and culture to glorify the One who created them.